By Benedicta Konadu
A Doctor and Member of the Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Society of Ghana, Dr. Daniel Osafo Darko, speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show has debunked the myth that, eating too much sugar causes diabetes.
He explained, “So every food mostly contains carbohydrates. That carbohydrate goes into your stomach. It breaks down, and then the glucose, which is the end product of the carbohydrate, is absorbed into your blood. Glucose is what we call sugar. So you can eat foods like all the other carbohydrates; we have rice, for instance, is a carbohydrate, yam is a carbohydrate, fufu is a carbohydrate, and plantain is a carbohydrate, all of them will end up as glucose in the blood after absorption. So they are all sugars in the long term.”
“It’s a very interesting way of describing diabetes as sugar disease because diabetes in itself is a disease when you see high blood sugar but not necessarily the sugar that goes into your body. Once they have carbohydrate, it’s broken down. It will be absorbed as sugar,” he said.
He did, however, reveal that people’s lifestyles predispose them to Type 2 diabetes, which is the most common type of diabetes.
“So Type 2 diabetes is actually the most common form. It’s about 90% of people who have diabetes. So that is a bigger problem. That is the one that really correlates with lifestyle. So the choice we make will predispose us to Type 2 diabetes. All sugars that will stay in your blood have to be used up by walking, doing activities, and all of that. So if the sugar stays in the blood at a very high level and it’s not used up, it means a person has diabetes,” he stated.
The doctor, however, advised diabetic patients to debunk this myth because it has a bad effect on them.
“A lot of people think that I don’t eat sugar so I can’t have diabetes. It’s a myth. It’s a myth of a sought, and it doesn’t help with action on the part of the patient or a person living with diabetes,” he advised.
